A service oriented architecture (SOA) enables enterprises to integrate services, handle business events, and automate business processes more efficiently. For example, an SOA links information technology resources, data, services, and applications. An SOA can include an enterprise service bus (ESB). An ESB is an event-driven and standards-based messaging engine that provides services for more complex architectures. The ESB provides infrastructure that links together service and clients to enable distributed applications and processes. For example, an ESB can include one or more busses that logically interconnect available services and clients.
The ESB interconnects service and clients using different protocols such as hypertext transfer protocol, common object request broker architecture, Java™, file transfer protocol, and email. In addition, ESB adds a layer of security to the connections using certificate exchange between the ESB client and ESB server. ESB uses the security to allow/disallow ESB clients to ESB services.